Three Rivers Community Foundationhttp://trcfwpa.org
Mon, 30 Mar 2015 17:15:29 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.0.1Want to hear what young people think about police in Pittsburgh?http://trcfwpa.org/want-to-hear-what-young-people-think-about-police-in-pittsburgh/
http://trcfwpa.org/want-to-hear-what-young-people-think-about-police-in-pittsburgh/#commentsMon, 30 Mar 2015 17:01:44 +0000http://trcfwpa.org/?p=7490Listen to the new Hear Me Podcast to hear directly from youth about their experiences and perspectives on Youth-police relations in Pittsburgh!
]]>http://trcfwpa.org/want-to-hear-what-young-people-think-about-police-in-pittsburgh/feed/0Body Cameras Successfully Reduce Incidents of Police Brutalityhttp://trcfwpa.org/body-cameras-successfully-reduce-incidents-of-police-brutality/
http://trcfwpa.org/body-cameras-successfully-reduce-incidents-of-police-brutality/#commentsFri, 27 Mar 2015 21:04:18 +0000http://trcfwpa.org/?p=7486Read more >]]>By Paul Butler

In light of the growing number of police officers around the country who appear to believe that performing their jobs today puts their lives in increasing danger, the issue of police brutality seems to represent an issue on which different sides are unable to find much common ground. The extent of this divide became clear in early January, when police officers turned their backs on New York Mayor Bill de Blasio en masse for the third time in as many weeks, apparently over his comment that he, like many other parents of “young [men] of color,” had to “train” his son to act with particular caution when confronted by police officers. The recent string of high-profile deaths of unarmed black men and boys at the hands of cops helps demonstrate that the mayor’s statement reflected good parenting rather than an unfounded attack on officers. Although a comprehensive database of police shootings does not exist, the available data indicate that blacks are killed by officers in highly disproportional numbers. And despite claims to the contrary, police work is getting safer: fewer officers died in 2013 than in any year since World War II. Furthermore, when deaths are taken as a percentage of the total police force, 2013 was the safest time to be a cop in over a century.

Beyond the outrage over the deaths of Eric Garner and other victims, police brutality demonstrations also stem from longer-term racial disparities among those stopped by cops, including through the controversial stop-and-frisk program. In 2011, for example, the New York Civil Liberties Union noted that “the number of stops of young black men exceeded the entire city population of young black men,” indicating that the average young black male in the city was stopped more than once. Even though the overwhelming majority of those stopped were innocent, defenders of stop-and-frisk argued that the policy effectively deterred crime. Recently released findings, however, indicate otherwise. In 2014, Mayor de Blasio’s first year in office, 79 percent fewer stops occurred than the previous year, but crime nonetheless dropped by 4.6 percent, with homicides at their lowest level since New York City began keeping reliable records in the 1960s. Evidently, racially discriminatory policing is not just morally abhorrent, but also ineffective.

This December, in the midst of this focus on police practices, President Obama proposed federal funding to help purchase over 50,000 body cameras, which several studies have indicated alter officers’ and citizens’ behavior for the better. In Rialto, California, when body cameras were randomly assigned among the police force for a year, citizen complaints decreased by 88 percent, while use-of-force complaints dropped by 60 percent against cops wearing cameras. Despite the large partisan divide on most police brutality issues, polls have found nearly unanimous support among Americans for requiring officers to wear small cameras while on duty. Outfitting police with such devices certainly raises some privacy concerns, but with proper safeguards it could represent a way to help reduce crime and provide video evidence to resolve claims of violence.

In the cases of Eric Garner, a black man who died after being put in a headlock by officers who approached him for selling loose cigarettes, and Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old black boy holding an Airsoft pellet gun that the 9-1-1 caller rightly noted was “probably fake” who was shot virtually without hesitation and denied first aid for four minutes, clear video evidence has helped to show beyond doubt that the deaths were caused by the unwarranted violence of cops. Of course, larger inequities exist within our justice system that cameras won’t be able to solve on their own: Daniel Pantaleo, the officer who killed Eric Garner, was not indicted on any charges by the grand jury, and it remains an open question if the cops responsible for Tamir’s death will face legal repercussions. Earlier this month, however, Wikipedia edits to the pages of Eric Garner and several other shooting victims downplaying police culpability were traced to computers located at NYPD headquarters.

The Justice Department’s recent report on the Ferguson Police System, documenting among other wrongdoings the usage of the regional court and police infrastructure as a means for extracting money from black residents, demonstrates the ways in which legal systems around the country are often stacked against minorities. In a broader sense, part of the problem in cases without video evidence or a reliable eyewitness is the sobering reality that when a black man is shot dead and the only person left alive to tell the firsthand story is the shooter, many individuals are all too willing to assume that the victim was a “thug” who deserved or otherwise brought about his death. Racial inequities in our police system and in our society as a whole won’t be going away anytime soon, but the first step in treating the problem is for all Americans to recognize that those inequities do, in fact, exist. Routinely viewing the accounts of police officers and other citizens who kill unarmed individuals with a healthy degree of skepticism will go a long way toward putting our justice system on the path to fairness.

Teens for Change is a group of youth grantmakers that fund other youth-led social change initiatives in Southwestern PA. Have a youth-led initiative that you need money to run or start? Download the Teens-for-ChangeRFP2015 here to apply to fund your program.

Applications are due March 13th, 2015 at 5pm! Applications should be emailed to alynch@threeriverscommunity.org. In addition, you may fax copies to (412) 243-0504, or mail/drop them off at:

As one of his first headline-worthy moves as Governor of PA, Tom Wolf announced a moratorium on the state’s death penalty statue. This has, predictably, been heralded by progressives, and decried by those who, like former Texas Governor Rick Perry, believe that those sentenced as criminals deserve the “ultimate justice”. Yet while there can be no doubt about the remarkable agony experienced by those whose lives, families, and communities have been harmed by crime and murder, the fact of the matter is that the capital punishment is inhumane, assumes unquestionable accuracy in the criminal justice system, and represents an egregious overreach of government.

The inhumanity of the death penalty, to begin with, has been well documented over the past year. We have seen it in high profile cases in Alabama, where a botched lethal injection resulted in death by heart attack, and right in neighboring Ohio, where a new combination of lethal injection drugs lead to a man visibly gasping and convulsing before his death. Moreover, it should speak volumes that the reason these haphazard drug combinations are being used in lethal injections is because, facing ire of public opinion, drug companies have largely either ceased producing lethal injection drugs, or produced them with the stipulation that they not be used in executions The result, as Fordham Law School professor Deborah W. Denno described it in 2013, is states with death penalty statues just scrambling for drugs, and…changing their protocols rapidly and carelessly.” Through this prism alone, Governor Wolf’s moratorium makes sense: when dealing with death, we should expect our government to be as cautious, thorough, and reasonable as possible.

Nonetheless, it doesn’t take a legal scholar or historian to understand that the U.S. criminal justice system is riddled with issues. And therein lies another fundamental problem with capital punishment: conceding that the death of and individual at the hands of the state is justified requires the concession that our system of justice is infallible—essentially, that those on death row are definitively guilty of their crimes. The fact of the matter, though, is that this just is not the case. As deathpenaltyinfo.org notes, from 2000-2011, there has been an average of five exonerations of death row inmates per year. What is more, over, 140 people have been released from death row since the death penalty was legalized in 1973. It is worth bearing in mind that this doesn’t mean only 140 people have been worthy of release since 1973—merely that those are the cases where the resources have been in place for them to be tried again and given a fair shake. As Amnesty International notes, “Each prosecutor decides whether or not to seek the death penalty. Local politics, the location of the crime, plea bargaining, and pure chance affect the process and make it a lottery of who lives and who dies,” while “Almost all death row inmates could not afford their own attorney at trial. Court-appointed attorneys often lack the experience necessary for capital trials and are overworked and underpaid.”

The arbitrariness of how the death penalty is doled out, as implied by Amnesty International, highlights the ultimate irony of capital punishment: for a country so preoccupied with the ills of government overreach, we, at the end of the day, are somehow okay with the government committing homicide. As Republican state representative Mike Vereb puts it, “Pennsylvania crime victims deserve justice. What they are receiving from the governor is politics” (Pennlive.com). But the fact of the matter is that “justice”—as he describes capital punishment—is a system where, “since 1977, the overwhelming majority of death row defendants (77%) have been executed for killing white victims, even though African-Americans make up about half of all homicide victims”. “Justice,” as described by representative Vereb, is a system where, in states having conducted reviews of race and the death penalty, 96% have found a pattern of “either race-of-victim or race-of-defendant discrimination, or both” (deathpenaltyinfo.org). Study after study, as deathpenaltyinfo.org notes, has revealed that black defendants are far more likely to be sentenced to death than white defendants. And therein lies in the truth behind representative Vereb’s claim: “justice,” in the U.S., protects a racist ideology that we all need to work to combat.

In announcing Pennsylvania’s moratorium on the death penalty, Governor Wolf “cite[d] a 2003 report by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s Committee on Racial and Gender Bias in the Justice System that found “strong indications that Pennsylvania’s capital system does not operate in an evenhanded manner” where gender and racial bias is concerned” (Huffington Post). Governor Wolf’s auctions are certainly laudable, and we need to acknowledge that it is the very least that can be done to fight bias and injustice in the criminal justice system.

]]>http://trcfwpa.org/death-penalty-moratorium-should-be-applauded/feed/0Reminder – Teens for Change grant application due Friday, March 13th at 5pm!http://trcfwpa.org/reminder-teens-for-change-grant-application-due-friday-march-13th-at-5pm/
http://trcfwpa.org/reminder-teens-for-change-grant-application-due-friday-march-13th-at-5pm/#commentsThu, 26 Feb 2015 23:00:51 +0000http://trcfwpa.org/?p=7470Read more >]]>Teens for Change is a group of youth grantmakers that fund other youth-led social change initiatives in Southwestern PA. Have a youth-led initiative that you need money to run or start? Download the Teens-for-ChangeRFP2015 here to apply to fund your program.

Applications are due March 13th, 2015 at 5pm! Applications should be emailed to alynch@threeriverscommunity.org. In addition, you may fax copies to (412) 243-0504, or mail/drop them off at:

For many of us, February is the month of celebrating a Valentine or ignoring the lack thereof. On university campuses around the country, many students also identify it as time for the The Vagina Monologues. What began as one woman’s idea to raise awareness and eliminate violence against women has turned into an international affair.

Every year organizations put together the event known as the The Vagina Monologues to promote awareness of the cause and encourage donations to put towards local projects, such as women’s shelters or rape crisis centers. The performance is a way to give a voice to the stories of women. In my experience, these stories range from traumatic incidences to a recounting of very funny journeys. Each monologue has its own style. The format of the performance offers the audience a unique look into the lives of women all around the world, of different ages, races, and definitely with varying views on sexuality.

TheVagina Monologues are part of a bigger initiative known as V-Day. According to their official website, “V-Day is a global activist movement to end violence against women and girls. V-Day is a catalyst that promotes creative events to increase awareness, raise money, and revitalize the spirit of existing anti-violence organizations”. Oftentimes, organizations, such as my college, carry out an entire V-Week comprised of events that are inspired by the V-Day initiative.

What’s the point of this, you ask? It’s a current event that reflects the need for change. These annual performances enlighten us about the struggles of women all over the world. They show us that women are still hurting, whether it is from physical harm or the fear of their own sexuality. This is my fourth year as an actress in the The Vagina Monologues at my college. At first, I participated for myself; I needed to open my mind up to the ideas about society’s views of my body and decide for myself how I thought of what it means to be female. Now, though, I am performing because I believe these monologues deserve a voice, and I think that the women and men in the audience deserve to have their ideas challenged and their eyes opened. Many of my female friends approached me after my first performance and told me that while some of the content was startling at first, they felt empowered by these stories.

Although I have heard some of these monologues several times, their messages continue to resonate, to fill the room. The good, the bad, and the surprising things that Eve Ensler has documented continue to impress me.

Although we have made leaps and strides in the way of gender equality, we still have a long distance to run before anyone can boast about the safety of girls and women on a global level. If you’re interested in learning more about the monologues and V-Day, visit http://www.vday.org/about/why-vday-started.html#.VOQCMy6gXaw to learn how it started and about the details of the initiative. And by all means, go to a performance this month (and during the beginning of March). Sit in on a show that makes you a little uncomfortable at first, one that deals with real issues that exist right next door as well as halfway around the world. I suspect you’ll walk away with more than just a ticket stub.

Written by Michaela Lies, writing intern at Three Rivers Community Foundation and student at Washington & Jefferson College

Ferguson, Missouri. A place that would hardly be on the radar of many Americans, were it not for the infamous murder of Michael Brown. Eric Garner. Police cameras. Names and concepts that were not in the popular imagination (at least, I know, for myself) until this past summer and fall. They are there now, thankfully, and hopefully will stay there long enough to inspire lasting change in this country. After all, when young black men are 21 times as likely to be killed by police as young white men, it is overwhelmingly clear we have a problem with both police brutality and racial prejudice in this country.

The national backlash to these events (among others) has been well-embodied by the #blacklivesmatter movement, whose reach has been far and wide among urban centers in the U.S.–perhaps most notably at Million March NYC, a protest of police violence held in New York City back in December. These protests have been powerful, I would argue, because of they have been coordinated nationally, and they have signaled, without a shadow of a doubt, that so many Americans are furious about inequality and violence in this country, and that the status quo is clearly not affecting the change necessary to uplift black Americans (and, in so doing, uplift each and every one of us–we all rise together).

Nonetheless, it seems clear to me that, while these movements shine an all-too-necessary light on lingering racial prejudice in this country, we here in Pittsburgh have an obligation to narrow our focus and tackle the scourge social inequity here at home. After all, names like Michael Brown and Eric Garner are just two of those that matter–their murders are endemic of a much larger problem of racial prejudice that spreads across the country.

“Yeah,” you might respond, “but I haven’t heard about any police brutality and prejudice in Western Pennsylvania recently. Shouldn’t we be focusing on places where this is clearly a larger problem?” To which I would respond: this is true–there have not been especially high profile cases of police brutality reported in the region in the past few months, although we all know of the cases of Jordan Miles, Leon Ford, and others that exist in the not so distant history of Pittsburgh. With that said, police brutality exists within a much larger web of prejudicial institutions and power structures that we all, across the country, take part in to some degree. What is more, a picture painted by “Pittsburgh’s Racial Demographics 2015: Differences and Disparities” (University of Pittsburgh) is decidedly grim. According to the report, “People of minority racial backgrounds lack opportunities to obtain sufficient employment, become adequately educated, live in good neighborhoods and enjoy a life free of foul treatment from the legal justice system.” This, moreover, is exemplified by policing statistics culled from the report by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: the report finds that “Black youths were arrested at twice the rate of white youths nationally, but six times as much in the Pittsburgh region. The violent crime arrest rate for adults was four times higher for blacks than whites nationally, but 10 times higher in the region.”

So, while the national narrative of the #blacklivesmatter movement is monumentally important and timely, I believe it is clear that not only is it important for us to take the momentum of the movement and use it to protest and affect change locally, it is also imperative we do so. Not acting locally leaves our regional community ripe for atrocity and the perpetuation of structural inequality along racial lines, and leaves us blind to the harder-to-see realities of life that enable prejudice and militant policing to occupy the status quo.

In an unprecedented effort led by a team of African-American business leaders in New York, organizations across the U.S. coordinated a massive national campaign to find African-American business leaders to underwrite free admission to theAcademy Award-nominated film “SELMA” for students around the country.

The new cities added are the efforts inspired by the overwhelming success of the program in New York City, in which 27 African-American business leaders created a fund for 27,000 of the city’s 7th, 8th and 9th grade students to see the film for free. That effort sold out in the very first weekend.

In Pittsburgh, we will be fundraising for the first 2 weeks of Black History Month and we are working with Paramount Pictures to secure the theaters during the last 2 weeks of Black History Month.

With the press release coming soon, we will set a fundraising goal of $50,000 that will allow 5,000Pittsburgh area youth to see the film for free.

Black Political Empowerment Project (B-PEP) will act as treasurer for The “#SelmaForStudentsPghFund”

The attacks in France last week, which killed 17 people, are tragic, but they are atypical. The harsh reality is that Muslims are most often the target of Muslim attacks. While 1.5 million marched in Paris on Sunday no on mourned the 2000+ Nigerian citizens killed by Boko Haram.

Not even their country’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, saw fit to make a visit to Maduguri, the site of the attacks, until yesterday, and he was tight-lipped about the tragedy promising only that those displaced by the attack would not have to remain in camps for too long. He also told survivors that the military assured him that Boko Haram would be overcome soon.

One might rightly be skeptical about such assertions since Boko Haram has reportedly killed over 13,000 people since 2009 and it seems that no one is taking action. Many news organizations have speculated that President Goodluck has sought to distance himself from the killings so as not to upset his chances in a few weeks when Nigeria holds its democratic elections. It is a sad state of affairs when an elected official cares little about the massacres in his own country.

Radical groups like Boko Haram and ISIS do not see westerners as their primary targets. The killing of westerners, for them, is tangential to the greater goal of regressing Muslim culture. The name Boko Haram, for instance, literally means, “Western education is forbidden.”

Last month Boko Haram kidnapped 200 villagers from a Nigerian town, most of them women and children. Similarly, ISIS released a pamphlet last week with guidelines on what the Koran says regarding captured women. Mostly along the lines of if their vaginas need to be “cleansed” before you can rape them.

I do not mean to diminish the tragedies in France, they are deplorable and should be condemned. The march in Paris on Sunday was a beautiful sight, a courageous affirmation of freedom of speech. Yet no one marches for the Muslim victims of ISIS and Boko Haram. It seems that the Western media simply does not care about radical Islam unless they are killing Westerners.

Brandon Kennedy is a Marine veteran and a student at Chatham University’s Professional Writing program.

]]>http://trcfwpa.org/no-one-marches-for-the-victims-of-boko-haram/feed/0Teens for Change 2015 grant application now available!http://trcfwpa.org/teens-for-change-2015-grant-application-now-available/
http://trcfwpa.org/teens-for-change-2015-grant-application-now-available/#commentsWed, 14 Jan 2015 22:03:03 +0000http://trcfwpa.org/?p=7404Read more >]]>Teens for Change is a group of youth grantmakers that fund other youth-led social change initiatives in Southwestern PA. Have a youth-led initiative that you need money to run or start? Download the Teens-for-ChangeRFP2015 here to apply to fund your program.

Applications are due March 13th, 2015 at 5pm! Applications should be emailed to alynch@threeriverscommunity.org. In addition, you may fax copies to (412) 243-0504, or mail/drop them off at: